Posts tagged deaf

More often than not, most features released by Uber are designed for its customers, not drivers. Today, though, the ridesharing firm is making some changes to help a specific group of people behind the wheel: those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. These updates, planned in tandem with the National...

Even deaf people who excel at lip reading need a bit of help when it comes to meetings or group conversations. The developers of a new app called Transcense claim it's the hearing impaired's answer to understanding hard-to-follow chit-chats where everybody's talking almost all at once. How? Well,...

Toshiba's newest hire (of sorts) is called Aiko Chihara -- and she's manning a reception desk at the company's booth at CEATEC 2014 in Japan. Oh, and she's silcone-coated robot. Interaction isn't in her repertoire just yet -- a Toshiba spokesman said that it was certainly a possibility in the futu...

Over the last few years closed captions have become increasingly prevalent in online video, but now the FCC is pushing for providers to go even further. It's already a requirement for full-length video that originally aired on TV to come with captions when it's streamed online, but new rules appro...

If you're fluent in American Sign Language, congratulations: you know one more language than most of the people reading this post. The rest of us? A solution to our communicative failures is on the way. A company called MotionSavvy is building a Leap Motion-equipped tablet case that can actively i...

Even though she can't hear any of the music or sound effects in the game, Kelsey Fireheart professes a strong love for Wizard101. In a guest post on the KingsIsle blog, Kelsey shares a little of what it's like to be a deaf gamer and why this MMO means so much to her.
Shortly after starting her adv...

Though early Kinect patents showed its potential for sign language translation, Microsoft quashed any notion early on that this would become a proper feature. However, that hasn't stopped Redmond from continuing development of the idea. Microsoft Research Asia recently showed off software that all...

How smoothly do you think your raid would run without Vent? The instant connection of voice communications makes short work of strategizing before an encounter. It allows raid leaders to direct the flow during battle, issuing new orders, calling out phases, and reminding players when to move. It al...

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.
I had to ed...

Floating around this week was a wonderful story from former Apple Store employee Chris Gonzales. He tells the tale of a group of deaf students who visited his Apple Store to purchase new Macs. After struggling for a few minutes because he couldn't communicate with them, he came up with the idea...

In a change of conversation that would make Don Draper proud, Netflix has picked up its blogging pen and accentuated the positive, even as hundreds of titles provided by Starz Play blinked away this week. The first bit of good news? Content that's coming instead of going includes several movies tha...

Engineers from Google have commandeered a booth at this year's CSUN accessibility conference and they're keen to talk up their latest efforts. For the visually impaired, there's now a beta version of a Chrome screen reader called ChromeVox (demo'd after the break), plus improved shortcuts and scree...